


All of the others

by idkimtired



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:07:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idkimtired/pseuds/idkimtired
Summary: What all (some) (ok fine five) of the others think
Relationships: Alvarez/Laila Dermott, Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	1. Isabelle

1\. Jean Moreau is a bastard. A disappointing fact Isabelle has come to terms to with. Finding out that she had been accepted on a sports scholarship to USC to play with not only _the Trojans_ but also _Jean Moreau_ had been a dream come true. She had arrived head stuffed full of dreams of making him fall in love with her, or, in the very least, becoming his new best friend.

This was, as he made very clear, not going to happen. She can at least take reassurance in the fact that this is not uniquely applied to her but everyone. And it doesn't really change that shes still a little bit in love with him. She thinks they all are, at least a little. Straight or not doesn't apply, boys or girls. It's Jean Moreau. Its quickly become commonly accepted fact among them that every one of the Trojans is a little but in love with Jean Moreau. That's just life. The Way of Things.

It's not just looks, or at least she doesn't think it is, not that he doesn't have enough of them for it to be the case, tall with sharp, high cheekbones, a soft tumble of dark hair and long lashes, each movement careful and elegant. It's these looks that have head turn as he walk across campus, that have passerbyes blush and baristas constantly writing phone numbers on his black coffee. No, this in itself would be enough, but the Trojans are privy to more, to something underneath that cold arrogance, sharp and sometimes cruel sarcasm and silent judgement, after months of the slow crumbling of his walls as he relaxes around them, Jean Moreau proves to be painfully adorable, full of wide eyed confusion and amused incomprehension at the smallest of things. Isabelle still dies inside every time she remembers the first time she saw him a breakfast with messy bed hair.

Even his irritated, bluntly honest, comments during practise are now more just exasperated, sometimes even holding a hidden note of fondness.

He's still a bastard, its just that they've adopted him and he has, rather grudgingly, let them. Isabelle does still, occasionally, want to hit him. This too is a communal sentiment on the subject of Jean Moreau. Sometimes you just have to take a few deep breaths.

Sometimes she does wish they spoke maybe a little more. But he's found his people and frankly, she's not invested enough to try break into that group, as friendly (apart from him) as they are. You know those groups of people who are just slightly intimidating, even if you get along with them, cause like, they're _all_ nice and pretty and very close? Yeah. No, she's found her own people, friends among the teams other newcomers, a boyfriend from one of her classes. It's hard to be in any way bitter about the, admittedly off course, way things have gone. She likes the way the team has organised itself, the friendships that have formed, some stronger than others.

Frankly, it's hard to imagine Jean Moreau anywhere else than with that group, hard to imagine them without him too. She's pretty sure Alvarez decided on day one that Jean Moreau didn't really have a choice but to accept he friendship and its worked out better than anyone would have liked, the pair a true nightmare, especially on hungover mornings. Her girlfriend, the vice captain Laila Dermott, rolled along with it and still somehow tolerates the pair, a calmer, more stabling presence that Isabelle often finds herself grateful for. And Jeremy Knox. Isabelle's 90% sure their captain just... annoyed Moreau into being friends with him as much as Moreau seemed to have attempted to avoid him at first - a tactic that was always going to fail, considering they share a room. They make a movie-like pair the two of them, ridiculously good looking and polar opposites. Sometimes she wonders how on earth that works but they've fallen into a comfortable balance, their own sort of world she's not sure even Alvarez or Laila can understand.

The four of them are the perfect solid base off which the team is built, a unified front on and off the pitch between Moreau's brutal honesty, Knox's determined positivity, Dermott's steady reason and Alvarez's tendency towards relaxing mischief. If they don't win this year, Isabelle will be throwing hands.

Yeah, Jean Moreau might be a bastard but by now she can't really see him as anything else. She just has to lie whenever the press comes knocking. 

2\. The first real conversation Isabelle has with Jean Moreau isn't until after Christmas, in a bustling on campus coffee shop. Dermott invites her over to their table as she's waiting for her (very late) boyfriend. Her vice captain has taken over a low table surrounded by armchairs in the back corner of the shop to where she brings drinks for herself, her girlfriend and Moreau, who has opted out of sitting on any of the surrounding armchairs, choosing the floor instead, in order to be closer to the table. The table he has completely covered with his course work, a collection of sketchbooks sprawled out and covering every surface. He's working on a sketch of an elderly woman from the neighboring table while Alvarez offers what seems like mostly unhelpful advice.

They both look up at the arrival of coffee.

Isabelle collapses herself into the armchair opposite him, curiously observing his work. By now, the entire team is well aware that the backliner is a surprisingly good artist, constantly drawing away, on his hand and arm in the absence of paper while Alvarez makes dramatic proclamations about ink poisoning. The drawings infront of him are now all in black and white and mostly all people, hands, feet, faces, full bodies sprawling across the table top. She recognizes a lot of her teammates among them but some, like the old women, are just random strangers. Shes a little disappointed upon not finding herself.

"Jean," says Dermott, "Is it really necessary to take over _the entire table?"_ He pouts but does as she asks, moving his sketchbooks until he's only taking up half the table. "There we go." Dermott hands him his coffee before her girlfriend, kissing the top of her head as she does.

After one last hopeful glance at the entrance in search of her boyfriend, Isabelle pulls out her french work with a sigh. If she's being honest, she has no idea why she's continued this dammed language. It's definitely not for the grades.

Alvarez turns out to be surprisingly helpful with various verb conjugations and grammer rules she struggles to shape into the space she's meant to have written by Friday and of which she understands maybe, if she's being generous, half the words. By comparison, fluent, french born Moreau is surprisingly unhelpful, able to offer correct spelling and translations but not reasons behind them and with very little patience for how utterly awful she is. He's makes up for it by being much better at helping her say it all though, tiredlessly repeating the same words over for her to pronounce.

They're deep into trying to roll her r's, Moreau wincing with each of her and Alvarez's attempts, when Jeremy Knox arrives.

"Hey, hey, hey," he says breathlessly, extra-large creamy looking coffee in one hand. "Sorry I took so long." He taps Moreau lightly in the shoulder as he passes but a familiar and casual, almost thoughtless, gesture and Isabelle watches the french boy relax from a tension she hadn't even noticed. "Professor was giving back essays." He throws himself backwards onto the armchair behind Moreau, who leans back to settle comfortably against his legs.

"Good news?" asks Alvarez and he grins. "Better than I thought. Look." He tosses her the essay over Moreau's head, who looks up at him with a smirk.

"I told you so."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever _Moreau_." Knox rolls his eyes, but he's grinning as he ruffles the other boys hair, messing it up. Moreau makes a face and fixes it. "So what are you doing?"

"French," sighs Isabelle mournfully.

"She's terrible," says Moreau regretfully and Jeremy flicks him gently in the head.

"Constructive criticism, remember?"

"No."

Their captain rolls his eyes. It's obviously a recurring conversation.

"I just can't roll my rs," Isabelle explains, trying not to feel too defensive, and Moreau snorts which is a little rude and doesn't do much to help his case.

"No one can," Knox tells her cheerfully, "The french are just snobs." He pokes Moreau as he says so, who makes a small indignant noise of protest. Isabelle laughs.

Her boyfriend arrives not long afterwards and she leaves with him almost regretfully, thanking them for their help with a wave of her half written speech. When she glances back one last time, Knox is leaning over and pointing at one of Moreau's drawings and the other boys is looking up at him as he says something, face unusually earnest.


	2. Laila

1\. January's early evening dark and bitter morning cold has driven them mad decides Laila, leaning against the kitchen doorframe to watch the chaos unfold in their sitting room. It's mostly Jeremy's fault because of course it is. She is, however, slightly surprised, and a little amused, with how invested Jean has let himself get, how easily he was dragged into this. A little disappointed to be honest. There goes one of the only people she could rely on not to succumb to Jeremys mad plans.   
It's not that the _idea_ of building a pillow fort for movie night is bad, it's the fact that they're a team of over twenty people. Most of who will be here. Neither of the boys seem discouraged.   
"That's why we gave ourselves so much time, " insists Jeremy, who has zero sense of time or time keeping skills as they start to do something complicated with the kitchen chairs. Jean nods in agreement (really, what has he gotten into this evening?) and taps Jeremy on the shoulder to show him something, waving vaguely and what looks like randomly at somewhere near the TV. Somehow, Jeremy seems to understand what he means, beaming and nodding enthusiasticly.   
Whatever it is doesn't seem to work, the two boys discussing the matter in quiet voices, concentrated frowns on as they survey what, to Laila, just looks like an atomic bomb of cushions, mattresse sheets and chairs. It's almost funny to see them this serious, this concentrated, and definitely adorable.   
"Maybe we should stack the chairs?" suggests Jean eventually and Lailashakes her head as she burried it into her hands.  
"Could work," says Jeremy, "Why not try?" _Oh my God._ Laila can't watch this. She escapes to the kitchen to start on the popcorn. Bad idea. She should have known leaving the two of them like this unsupervised was a bad idea.   
At the sound of a loud crash and a help she comes running back into the sitting room to find Jeremy lying on the ground, surrounded by fallen chairs and cradling his elbow while Jean stands above him, ruffling a hand through this hair with a sheepish look on his face. Jeremy moans dramatically and Jean falls gracefully to his knees beside him to poke his cheek, causing the other boy to wrinkle his nose and temporarily stop his dramatics. Jeremy stills completely however only when Jean leans over him to murder something before rather sulkily gesturing to his elbow. Jean collapses calmly backwards into a cross-legged sitting position and carefully takes Jeremy's hand. Jeremy just lies there, head rolled towards him, and let's him roll up his jumpers sleeve, suspiciously undramatic for the big Laila knows. Tonight he just watches Jean frown down at his arm. She's not sure he's breathing as Jean runs careful fingers over his elbow. Until he rolls his eyes and attempts to hit Jeremy's face with his own hair, who splutters indignantly and flails around to get out of his grip.  
"Idiot. You're not even bruised," accuses Jean. But he's grinning, that still rare smile of his. Laila backs out before they notice her, unsure why she doesn't feel like this is a moment to interrupt.  
A little while later, Jean comes wandering into the kitchen.   
"Do you have any nails?" he asks, "And a hammer?'

  
2\. At first, Laila was wary of Jean Moreau. She had disapproved of the fast irrationality of Jeremy's agreement to taking him when, despite how undeniably good he is, his style of play didn't match theirs, and neither did his temperament. She didn't want her team, their team, to be thrown off by this arrogant outsider, too quick to anger and too slow to friendship. A Raven.   
Caution had been the plan when approaching him until the day he arrived in California, a week early, with dark, haunted circles under his wide eyes, fading bruises on his neck and a plaster carefully hiding away his famous tattoo, watching them with an exhausted mistrust as he clutched his one tiny bag close. There was something a little defiant in the jut of his chin, something brave in the set of his shoulders. Yet also... something almost childlike, almost cute, in the way he fiddled with his oversized hoodie, stopping as soon as she noticed. Laila knew, in an almost defeated sort of way, in that moment that she was going to fight for this broken boy.  
Still, it took her longer to warm to him completely than it did for Alvarez, who takes his sharp, bitter sarcasm and tall, guarded defences with a laugh and a joking response, or Jeremy, who saw something immediately in Jean that would take a while for anyone else, even Coach, to see. There was an understanding between the two of them from the beginning that Lailas never understood, as little as Jean had spoken to any of them when he first arrived.  
Now, it's difficult to remember life before the grumpy french backliner, even more difficult to imagine a now without him. The sight of the two of them, Jean and Jeremy, squeezed together to play against each other in mario kart on their miniscule couch, Jeremy leaning forwards eagerly while Jean remains sunk backwards lazily, loosing so badly Laila has to wonder if he's doing it on purpose -it's been months, _surely_ he's improved at least a tiny bit - feels ridiculously like home. She almost regrets reminding them it's their turn to cook.

Almost.

But Jeans by far the best cook and, as much as he complains about it, she's pretty sure he enjoys it, something about having a recipe to follow seems to appeal to him, a disgusted look appearing whenever anyone (Jeremy) suggests not using one, as little as he actually obeys it. Actually, she's half convinced he likes having recipes purely for the power of ignoring them. And Jeremy -even though he's useless for 90% of the cooking, just sitting on the counter and watching Jean do it - always makes sure there's a dessert, something the rest of them are too lazy to bother with.   
She abandons her maths problem to watch them from her curled up position on her newly taken over couch. Jeremy is stealing little bites of food every two minutes while Jean is giving him Looks (he's really good at those, good enough that many have names among the Trojans - this one says _really?_ ), that work on everyone but Jeremy, who just sort of grins sheepishly. She likes watching the two of them, their own little language they seem to have between them but sometimes, like now, it tugs a little at her stomach.   
She's known Jeremy for what seems like forever now, known him since that first nerve wrecking day of highschool when a clumsy boy full of smiles and sunshine was the first person to bother to say hello. Since that first team tryout - where all of that clumsiness disappeared - that first deciding moment of friendship, she has gotten to know Jeremy probably better than anybody else. So she can tell that he doesn't even realise how he looks at Jean, doesn't realise how intense his eyes go or how he leans closer when the other boys is speaking. They both seem oblivious to it, arguing over a wooden spoon as the smell of frying vegetables rises. And, fine, she almost gets it, almost because it took her longer than it should have but God, it's so achingly obvious. As for Moreau... sometimes she wonders, sometimes for a beat, those odd, hidden moments he shows something behind his high walls, she wonders.   
In the end it's simple; she's scared. She's scared she's going to lose one of them when they realise, scared that she's going to be left to help pick up the shattered remains. But she's also started to wish that it could always be like this - dinners like a family, exy practice, the two boys laughing in the kitchen just in view. 

  
3\. Laila twists in her aeroplane seat to see behind her and ask for some mints. And pauses in surprise. Jeremy Knox, hyper, constantly moving, insomniac Jeremy Knox, is fast asleep on Jeans shoulder. She has to blink to make sure the sight is real - and yes, drowning in a too large hoodie, with the hood but falling back from his face, Jeremy has his head rested cozily on Jeans shoulder, face turned into the other boys neck, comfortably slumped entirely against him, his arm falling into Jeans lap. And Jean - who hasn't noticed her - instead of biting his head off like Layla can easily imagine him doing with anybody else, has his head tilted subconsciously towards the smaller boy an open book held loosely in one hand as he stared out the oval window.  
There's something so peaceful about the sight, a small world created by their closeness amid the chaos of their delayed flight that it doesn't seem possible, or maybe the world around seems less possible. Peaceful isn't a word Layla would ever think to use to describe either of the boys, for different reasons, but there is a steady, almost homely, calm about them. A steadyness. She takes a careful, sneaky photo, smiling at the softness she suddenly feels for the two of them before turning back, having forgotten her original reason for wanting to talk to them   
A half hour later she takes a second photo - this one of Jean now also fast asleep, face burried into Jeremys hair.


End file.
